The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
In plant development and improvement, genetic improvements are made in the plant, either through selective breeding or genetic manipulation, and when a desirable improvement is achieved, a commercial quantity is developed by planting and harvesting seeds over several generations. Not all seeds express the desired traits, and thus these seeds need to be culled from the population. To speed up the process of bulking up the population, statistical samples are taken and tested to cull seeds from the population that do not adequately express the desired trait. However, this statistical sampling necessarily allows some seeds without the desirable trait to remain in the population, and also can inadvertently exclude some seeds with the desirable trait from the desired population.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/213,430 (filed Aug. 26, 2005); U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/213,431 (filed Aug. 26, 2005); U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/213,432 (filed Aug. 26, 2005); U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/213,434 (filed Aug. 26, 2005); and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/213,435 (filed Aug. 26, 2005), which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety, disclose apparatus and systems for the automated sampling of seeds as well as methods of sampling, testing and bulking seeds.
However, at least some known automated sampling and testing systems allow for various types of contamination to taint collected samples and skew results. Therefore, there exists a need for the automated sampling of seeds in a substantially contamination-free manner.